Zune Reinforces Microsoft’s Dorky Image

In a lot of ways, I’m a good example of why a lot of people are predicting a surge for Apple products in the next few months. In fact — and true Apple-

Gizmodo

Same price, fewer features. But it is available in brown.

heads will hate to hear this — they look ready to become the one thing that no one expected — mainstream.

The reason, I think, is a little unexpected — iPod. With a little help from Microsoft’s wannabe music player, Zune.

Zune, just out in time for Christmas, is not only getting some lukewarm reviews, it is reinforcing Microsoft’s worst image problems.

Either the Micro-guys are clueless dorks — Zune is as expensive as iPod, bulkier, and is neither as easy to work as iPod nor as cool. Or, worse yet, the boys up north are malicious bullies. According to at least one review, the music system only works with the Microsoft Explorer browser, not Firefox, which many others and I prefer.

Bill Gates must grind his teeth every time one of those TV commercials comes on depicting the cool and very chill Apple guy talking to the doofus “PC,” with his baggy khaki pants and Gates-like horn-rim glasses.

But Microsoft has managed to create its own version. The big feature of Zune is the ability to “squirt” songs and pictures to other Zunes in the area. Kinda nice. Except that the songs only last three plays and can’t be converted to CDs or a music library. Great, three plays and its gone. Cue up a video of the PC guy nudging you repeatedly and saying, “Is that cool or what? Huh? Whataya think?”

I think I’d rather have an iPod, which has an easier download system that lets me use Firefox and doesn’t have a confusing song purchase system. Oh, and by the way, there’s no price break on Zune. You’re supposed to be so dazzled by the squirting that you’ll pay the same as for the established king of the genre. These are the kinds of decisions that are going to come back to bite Microsoft.

Sure, the iPod a great product, but that’s not the point here. There are ramifications that extend beyond the cool factor of walking around with hip white earphones. Whether Apple meant to or not, they created the ideal stalking horse for the rest of its line.

In other words, if a duffer like me bought an iPod (and I did) and if he not only loved the product, but the ease of use and terrific design (and I did), then I might start thinking about buying other, larger Apple products, like a laptop or desktop computer now that my old PC is starting to become outdated (and I am.)

It is the long-awaited, much-predicted, and until now not-happening surge in “mom and pop” Apple buying. Older buyers, who still control the bulk of the buying power in America, are starting to look at Apple as a dependable, well-designed alternative to a PC. It’s a little like the days when my parents started to think of a Toyota as a great car, which was a huge shift, since they’d always gone with the traditional, all-the-neighbors-have-one, old standby (like a Chevy.)

The ease of use theory, of course, has been around for years and years. Our family bought Grandma a Mac way back when because we convinced ourselves that she’s find it easier to learn on. What we’d forgotten, of course, is that the real key isn’t starting a computer up, it is getting help when you get stuck. Not only did none of her friends know how to work a Mac, neither did we. She had to wait until her grandkids came home to show her where she went wrong. The Mac sat in the corner and gathered dust.

But now even I feel the pull of that big white facade on the Apple store. I go in, wander around, fiddle with the computers and maybe even chat with the guys in the black T-shirts, who are (for the most part) friendly and not condescending to someone who doesn’t know how to post a video on YouTube. (But who, like a lot of mainstream types, is watching a lot of those videos once they are posted.) And when I go in, I notice a wide range of ages, not just the young and hip.

So, like others, I’m starting to think that I know this computer stuff now, it isn’t threatening in the slightest. And maybe I don’t need the old sedan with an automatic transmission that I used when I was learning to drive. Maybe I could get something with fuel injection, a stick shift, and a little better handling. A sexy Apple, in other words, instead of a boring old PC.

The response to the Zune, which was supposed to be ”the iPod killer,” only convinces me that I am right. Microsoft is probably being hurt by those TV ads which portray them as a doofus. So they went out and proved it by introducing a much-ballyhooed product that only reinforces the image.